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NORDVEST

We Owes

We Owes track the promises, follow-ups, sales opportunities, and warranty work your team needs to keep visible after a service conversation or visit. If someone says "we owe them an answer," it belongs here instead of in somebody's inbox.

Every We Owe gets a reference number like WE-1001 so it can be searched, discussed, printed, and linked back to the customer history.

Types

NORDVEST supports four We Owe types:

  • Commitment — A promise to the customer, like a backordered part, follow-up visit, pricing answer, or internal handoff
  • Opportunity — A potential sale or equipment upgrade tracked through the Sales CRM module
  • Warranty — A warranty claim, warranty update, or warranty-related follow-up
  • Project — A multi-step job with phases, managed from the Projects page

Opportunities are still We Owes under the hood. They keep the same customer context, sub-tasks, watchers, comments, attachments, and service-request links, but they also appear in the Sales Pipeline when the CRM module is enabled.

Creating a We Owe

  1. Go to We Owes
  2. Click Add We Owe
  3. Choose the type
  4. Select the customer
  5. Enter a title
  6. Add a description, owner, due date, asset, contacts, or linked Service Requests if needed
  7. Save

The title is the only required description field, but the best We Owes make the next action obvious. "Send quote for 25 HP replacement compressor" is much better than "follow up."

Commitments

Use a commitment for anything the team promised to do or check on. Common examples:

  • Follow up when a backordered part arrives
  • Schedule a return visit after parts are available
  • Send a manual, report, photo, or service note
  • Confirm pricing or availability
  • Coordinate an internal handoff

Commitments stay in the main We Owes list until they are completed or cancelled.

Opportunities and Sales CRM

When the Sales CRM module is enabled, opportunities move sales work into a real pipeline without separating it from service history.

An opportunity can track:

  • Stage — Target, Working, Intake, Qualifying, Quoting, Proposal Sent, Won, or Lost. Target and Working are the outbound prospecting stages ("we picked them and are trying to reach a human"); Intake is the inbound one ("they came to us"). Every opportunity always sits in a stage — if you don't pick one it starts at Intake, so a deal can never go missing from the Pipeline board
  • Estimated Value — The forecast value for the deal
  • Expected Close Date — When the opportunity is expected to land
  • Lost Reason — Why the deal was marked lost
  • Contacts — The people involved in the buying conversation

Open opportunities live in Sales → Pipeline. The general We Owes list focuses on commitments and warranties by default, while the Sales Pipeline gives opportunities board and table views by stage.

An opportunity can be captured with nothing but a name — no customer and no contact required up front. That's on purpose: jot down a lead the moment you hear about it and attach the account later. The Prospecting and "Needs a touch" views keep these floating prospects visible so they don't rot unseen. Marking a deal Won still requires a real customer account first.

The board's lanes are yours to shape. By default it shows the closing trunk — Intake through Won/Lost — keeping it a clean forecast surface. Ready-made views in the Views menu recompose it: Prospecting shows the early funnel (Intake, Target, Working, Qualifying, plus Lost so a dead early deal can be dragged out), Closing shows the money end (Qualifying, Quoting, Proposal Sent, Won), and Needs a touch is a call list rather than a board lens (see below). You can also pick your own lanes with the Lanes button and save the arrangement as a view of your own.

Aging

Opportunity and warranty We Owes show a small badge — "X days old" — marking how long it's been since the record showed a sign of life. It's quiet at first and shifts color as time passes, so a stalled deal or a warranty claim that's gone cold stands out at a glance. Commitments don't carry a stage, so they don't show an aging badge.

The badge follows the last real sign of life, in this order: the most recent logged interaction, then the last stage change, then when the record was created. Contact wins, because "the stage hasn't moved" is unfair to a prospect you've called four times this week. Hover the badge and it tells you which clock it's showing — "Last activity" when someone has actually been in touch, "In this stage since" when nobody has yet. You'll see the same badge on the Pipeline board cards, in the Pipeline's Last contact column, and in the We Owes list's Aging column.

Finding the deals you've neglected

The Sales Pipeline's Last contact filter answers the question that matters on a slow morning: who needs a call? Every option is framed as neglect rather than recency — Not contacted in 7+ days, 30+ days, 90+ days, and Never contacted for deals nobody has reached out to at all. Pick one and the board and grid narrow to just those deals. Sort by the Last contact column to put the most neglected at the top.

A deal you captured this morning and haven't called yet counts as never contacted, but it isn't 30 days neglected — the clock only starts running from when the deal actually appeared.

For the common version of this, the Views menu has Needs a touch — one click for every deal still in play that nobody has contacted in 30 days or more, longest-neglected first. It's a call list rather than a board lens, so it deliberately reaches across the whole funnel: a cold outbound target and a cold proposal both count as work. Deals you've deferred stay out of it, since a deal you parked on purpose isn't one you need to chase, and so do deals already Won or Lost. Picking any other view puts the ordering back to expected close date.

Promoting a Commitment

If a normal commitment turns into a sales conversation, open the We Owe and choose Promote to Opportunity. The record is converted in place, so its history, sub-tasks, comments, attachments, watchers, and linked Service Requests stay with it.

Warranties

Use warranties for claims and warranty-related follow-up. Warranty We Owes keep the claim visible next to the customer, asset, and service history so your team can see what is still waiting on the manufacturer, customer, or internal review.

Sub-Tasks

Each We Owe can have sub-tasks with their own assignee and status. Use them when multiple people need to contribute before the We Owe can be completed.

Examples:

  • Parts checks inventory
  • Service manager calls the customer
  • Sales prepares the quote
  • Technician confirms the serial number

Assigned users receive notifications when they are given a sub-task and when their sub-task is completed.

Your To-Do List

To-Do in the sidebar gathers every open sub-task that is yours to act on — assigned to you, or unassigned on a We Owe you own — across commitments, opportunities, warranties, and projects alike. It's the one place to answer "what should I do next?": tasks are listed in the order they were written down, and a checkbox marks them done right from the list.

Linking Service Requests

A We Owe can be linked to more than one Service Request. This is useful when a commitment starts on one visit and is resolved on another.

  • Link Service Requests directly from the We Owe form
  • The first linked Service Request can fill in the customer automatically
  • All linked Service Requests must belong to the same customer
  • From the We Owe detail page, Add Service Request creates a new request already linked to the We Owe

Watching and Notifications

Click Watch on a We Owe to receive notifications when its status changes. This is useful when you are not the owner but still need to know when the customer commitment, opportunity, or warranty item moves forward.

Closing a We Owe

When the work is finished, mark the We Owe Completed. If the item no longer applies, mark it Canceled. Completed and canceled records stay in history so the customer record still shows what happened.

Deleting a We Owe

For a We Owe that shouldn't exist at all — created by mistake, a duplicate — its creator or an admin can delete it from the We Owe's page. Anyone else can't, and there's no way to delete a We Owe through the AI/MCP connection. If it's just no longer relevant, Cancel it instead so the history stays intact.

Changing the Customer

If you move a We Owe to a different customer account, any linked contacts that belonged to the old account are dropped — they no longer make sense attached to the new customer. Contacts shared between both accounts stay linked.